Palimpsest (for the lady)
‘Also call me not Queen – I am sick of flattery and titles – call me
Ayesha, the name hath a sweet sound in mine ears, it is an echo
from the past.’ H. Rider Haggard, She (1887)
Call me Fuckit, she cried.
Anne is cold and someone
called me that once.
We danced like bees in the heat
and she threw her eyes to the sun
and they burned.
We squashed plastic cups,
turned them into African daisies,
made an office a meadow.
We gave gifts of smiles,
large and lost as continents,
crossed them with a laugh.
And she wrote calm on her face
but the watermark of the past
crept darkly to the surface.
The picture of an old summer
winking with kisses like nettles
and a virus with a little name.
Call me Fuckit, her eyes fired.
Someone called me that once,
or perhaps they just thought it.
Page(s) 14
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The